Bridging the gap between environmental sustainability and sushi is tough.
But chef Hajime Sato of Sozai in Clawson has been at it for the last several decades. The practice helped earn him a coveted James Beard food award in June for Best Chef in the Great Lakes region.
At Sozai, Sato incorporates a variety of sustainable sushi methods like using more vegetables than typical sushi restaurants, sourcing local ingredients like eggs, and fish from the Great Lakes. He’s also utilizing bycatch — fish or animals that are not the target of fishing, but are typically thrown away when caught, or invasive species that take over an ecosystem.
Sushi has been growing in popularity in the United States while fish stocks are simultaneously declining due to overfishing, and climate change. Globally, consumption of aquatic species has increased at twice the rate of the world population in recent decades, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Meanwhile, nearly one-fifth of U.S. fisheries are overfished, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with new species added every year.
Sato said doing the work can be lonely as sustainable sushi is rare; the first sustainable sushi restaurants to emerge in the United States are less than 20 years old. Doing the work is difficult, as there aren’t widespread systems in place to get alternative species that don’t threaten the ocean ecosystem, but aren’t as popular as bluefin tuna or salmon. Beyond consumer education and advocacy, legislation like the FISH Act plays a role. The legislation, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, aims to increase fishery resilience against the backdrop of climate change, and mandate two studies of domestic seafood production.
Sato said he’s committed to the hard work, because the message of protecting the oceans is too important to let it go. BridgeDetroit sat down with Sato to learn the nitty gritty of sustainable sushi.
Editor’s note: This transcript was lightly edited for length and clarity.
BridgeDetroit: How has the James Beard award affected your business?
Sato: It’s a small restaurant, and we only take 20 people at a time, and it’s a busy restaurant, so it didn’t really change too much.
More interviews, which is really good because this message has to be more available and people should be paying more attention to this – if this James Beard gives me more platform to talk about it, I think that’s wonderful.
There’s a lot of people nationally (scientists, policymakers) that have wanted to work with me because of that, so I’m really excited about it. I just submitted a recipe and collaborated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. I’ve been working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch.
BridgeDetroit: Can I get these fish species at any regular grocery stores?
Sato: That is the problem – maybe.
If you go to the fish counter at any given moment, any big supermarket, they sell tuna, salmon, shrimp, and scallop. It’s really hard sometimes to get those (different) species but at the same time if enough people ask for it, maybe they’re going to have it.
It’s all about communication.
Let’s say you don’t know anything about sustainability, I want consumers to ask the fishmonger, ask the restaurants… let’s say 10 people ask…now the chef is going to think maybe they can make money off it because 10 people have asked for it.
That’s the important part – how can regular people participate? That’s how you participate.
BridgeDetroit: Have you ever considered using carp, which are invasive to the Great Lakes?
Sato: This is the problem, it’s everything about the supply chain. Everybody knows what the invasive species are, but there’s no path for the restaurant to get it and, at the same time, if you see carp at the restaurant, would you order it or would you get (the traditional dishes).
We have to have some kind of incentive to connect those invasive species, all the way to the customers, or at least to the restaurant and so many people.
BridgeDetroit: What is a species that is invasive, or bycatch, that you’ve been successful at getting people to eat at your restaurant?
Sato: Octopus – bycatch of octopus can easily be 200-300,000 pounds of octopus thrown away each year.
(More than 10 million pounds of bycatch is estimated to be thrown away globally each year, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.)
So every year I ask the cod and shrimp fishery guys ‘can you just give it to me, because you kill it and throw it away, anyway?’ And they say, ‘no.’ Because they don’t make money off of it and there’s no market for it, so why would they want to have another sector of the processing plant to save it and sell it?
Same as salmon eggs, I ask the fisherman to save it. I had to call 20-30 fishermen, and most of them said ‘no.’ One guy said ‘yes.’
Because nobody wants it, I have to buy it in bulk, so I buy 1,000 pounds (of octopus) each year. One year I had to get this weird international license to get octopus shipped from Vancouver to the United States. It’s awful.
It’s ridiculous, but at the same time I have to show that this fish or octopus or whatever that waste is, can be profitable, can be sold, somebody has to do it and somebody has to take a risk, otherwise nothing’s gonna happen.
BridgeDetroit: How much of your ingredients would you estimate are local?
Sato: Chicken and eggs, and produce, micros in Detroit and mushrooms. I actually grow a lot of stuff myself, a lot of Japanese herbs.
Fish wise it’s really hard because lake fish has parasites and other issues, so I am adopting those fish to cook it in a more traditional way of marinating fish with miso (versus serving raw fish). When you get grilled fish, it’s more local fish.
BridgeDetroit: Would you ever open a location in Detroit?
Sato: I’m not going to expand. I had the same restaurant in Seattle for 23 years and I never expanded. I’m not here to expand to make food that’s less than what I can do – I’m not satisfied here, this is maybe 20-30% of what I want to do right now, so everyday it’s going to improve hopefully, till I die.
To learn more about how to be a responsible sushi or fish consumer, check out this guide that Sato helped create for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program.
